All posts tagged ‘Chad Orzel’

In his first book How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Chad Orzel put quantum mechanics into terms even a German Shepherd mix (or English major) could understand by means of a dialectic with his pet Queen Emmy, whose interests run from chasing rabbits to virtual particles. Although the premise may sound like a stretch, as it turns out Emmy asks her owner just the right kind of insightful questions that help illustrate the weird and wonderful concepts that topic contains.

Now Orzel, a professor at Union College in Schenectady, NY, has a new book that gives the same treatment to the other great theory of modern physics. How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog covers everything from Einstein to dark matter, using analogies that dogs and ordinary people can relate to. For instance, the book helps readers visualize a light cone — which physicists use in spacetime diagrams to keep cause and effect from getting out of order as time and space stretch and contract — by letting Emmy compare it to a dog cone used to keep canines from biting at stitches.

Right now amateur science nuts like me actually have a wide range of materials to choose from to help them understand the hoopla over the LHC and other science news, from Brian Greene’s excellent TV specials to the CERN pop-up book. But reading Orzel’s book helped me tie several concepts together. What does a particle collider have to do with the Big Bang? Why does string theory require 10 or 11 dimensions? Orzel touches on these questions and more.

Although our homeschool science for the year is physics, and we’ve been focusing on “the good stuff” – relativity, quantum mechanics, alternate realities – it’s been hard to get my kids to pick up a book about the subject. We’ve watched some great NOVA specials, visited some physics labs and done a few fun experiments. But so far, nothing has inspired the kids to open up one of the many physics texts and popular books I’ve been scattering strategically around the house.

However, as luck would have it, I recently got the chance to interview Union College physics professor Chad Orzel. Orzel is a blogger, a dad, husband of fellow sci-fi/fantasy fan Kate Nepveu and owner of a very intelligent German Shepherd mix named Emmy. And thanks to a couple of entertaining dialogues with Emmy about the mysteries of quantum physics, Orzel is also author of a new book called How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Continue Reading “How to Teach Physics to Your Kids” »